RATES AND RATEPAYERS. T HE discussion on local taxation raised in
the House of Lords on Tuesday by Lord Denbigh was valuable as emphasising the determination of the Government to take the question in hand. The best intentions in a matter of this kind are apt to grow weak by reason of the complexity, and, we may add, the dulness, of the subject. Mr. Gladstone might perhaps have made and kept a House to listen to his exposition of it ; but we doubt whether any of his successors have possessed the same faculty. Interested listeners go some way to make interesting Ministers, and if Members could be trusted to come in crowds to hear the compound householder either blessed or cursed, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman would doubtless be ready to give them the economic fare they desired. The prospect that really confronts him is less attractive. He will have to father a very long and very complicated measure, certain to offend a number of local interests and to encounter the hostile criticism of a whole army of local experts, and if in the end it benefits many, to please but few in the first instance. To postpone the introduction of such a Bill is a constant temptation to every Government. In theory, no Cabinets had more reason for wishing to settle the question of local taxation than those of Lord Salisbury and Mr. Balfour. Both enjoyed a prolonged lease of office. Both had a great majority at their backs. Both represented those conservative and landowning interests which are most concerned to see local finance placed on a just and fairly permanent footing. But Prime Ministers came and wont, one Parliament was dissolved and another elected, the Cabinet went to pieces and was reconstructed, and local taxation remained what it is still,—a question with the magnitude of which each successive Government is pro- foundly impressed. Still, every restatement of this fact, uninspiring as it may be in itself, does force the Govern- ment of the day to commit itself a little further, and for this reason we welcome such Parliamentary incidents as that of Tuesday.
It happens, moreover, that there is one part of the question which stands very much by itself, and could easily be dealt with apart from the other and larger issues with which it is associated. Whatever view we may take of rates—whether we regard them as a provision for beneficent expenditure, as the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to do, or as supplying the means of local extrava- gance—we must all hold that they should be paid by those who know to what extent they are burdening themselves by voting them. Yet this elementary principle of finance is consistently disregarded in local taxation. In theory, every householder is rated, and in that capacity has to determine for what purposes a rate shall be imposed, and to pay his proper share of the sum levied. In practice, a great number of the ratepayers never see a rate-collector, or consciously contribute to the sum which he has to get in.
But though they are not taxed they are still represented. Every ratepayer has a vote for the authority which fixes the rate. But unfortunately every ratepayer is not a payer of rates. In a vast number of cases they are paid for him by his landlord, and however high the rate may be, he has no visible interest in making it lower. He may be told possibly
by some ardent preacher of economy that he will feel it in
a. rise of rent. His landlord, no doubt, pays. the rate for him, bid he does not pay it out of his own pocket. The landlord gets it back again in the shape of so much a week or a month more for the rooms the nominal ratepayer occupies. But though this is true in the long run, it is not a truth that comes home to the tenant at the time. The landlord usually takes care to guard himself against prospective increases in the rates if they seem at all near at hand ; and when the increase becomes actual, and he thinks that the time has come to raise his rent, there are so many other apparent reasons for doing so that the real reason commonly goes unnoticed. There are particular forms of economy, indeed, that occasionally assert their right to be considered. A rate for free libraries, for example, is very hard to get adopted in some towns. But the explanation of this is not that the compound householder instructs his representative to vote against the proposal. It is that the representative belongs to a class which thinks books an unnecessary luxury. As a rule the link between voter and representative is extraordinarily slight. The nominal ratepayer either does not vote at all in a municipal contest, or does so on some ground quite unconnected with the expenditure of the municipal revenue. Here, then, we have an instance of an evil which is plainly the creature of legislation. If every one who, directly or indirectly, voted in favour of a particular rate knew that he would have to pay his proper share of it, there would be nothing more to be said. The utmost the most imperious Local Government Board could then do —and Local Government Boards are seldom very imperious —would be to discourage the laying of too large a part of the burden on posterity. Communities must do what they think proper in the way of expenditure ; the one point which it is important to secure, and which can be secured, is that they shall know, and taste the consequences of, what they are doing. In the natural order of things, every ratepayer would possess this knowledge. The collector would come round at regular intervals, and the varying figures on the demand-note would show every tenant what he had brought on himself by voting for a candidate who had declared himself in favour of a rate for this or that purpose. The Legislature has deliberately denied the compound householder the benefit of this experience. It has sacrificed economy to the convenience of the rating authority.
Lord Carrington objected that, as a penny rate only means 4d. a year on a house rated at £4, the abolition of compounding would not "constitute an effective induce- ment to a ratepayer to look more closely into local affairs." In the first instance, perhaps, this might be true. But if the payment of rates became a personal act, a habit of looking into the expenditure of them would grow up which might in time act as a useful check on a process which does not invariably stop at an additional penny. The great point is to make the ratepayer feel that it rests with him, and with such as him, to say what the rate shall be. That is all that legislation can do, and all that it ought to aim at, and any plan which works towards that end deserves full consideration, and, unless it can be shown to be impracticable, prompt adop- tion. The only objection to the abolition of the present system is that it saves trouble and expense to the local authorities. If it were put an end to, the rates would have to be collected from a great number of small and poor ratepayers, and this would mean more work for the rate- collector and more frequent cases of bad debts. But the landlord does not do the work for nothing. The com- position which constitutes his reward for the duty he takes on himself is sometimes as much as thirty per cent. of the amount collected, and if this sum were spent in increasing the pay of the rate-collector the actual loss at the end of the year would probably be very small, while the advantage it would purchase in the.way of economy, and still more of interest in local matters, would be con- siderable. Lord Fitztnaurice, it is true, thinks that it would be very difficult to abolish compounding to any large extent "because of the very great convenience such an arrangement is to the local authority." But against this official dislike of anything difficult let us place the Archbishop of Canterbury's assurance that in those parts of England where the power a compounding is rarely used there is "infinitely greater interest taken in public affairs." • It is worth while to give local authorities some little additional trouble if we can obtain such a result as this. Trouble in this case stands for difficulty in getting in the money, and the Archbishop further suggests that much of this would be avoided if in very poor districts the rates were collected, as the rents are, weekly. If rates are to be got in from people who live by weekly wages, and for the most part meet the rent-collector weekly, the obvious thing to do is to apply for the rate at the same interval. Lord Denbigh made another suggestion which, though far less sweeping than abolition, might, if it were universally adopted, go some way towards remedying the evil of compounding. It is that landlords should be compelled by law to show on the demand-note they present to their tenants how much of the sum asked for is for rent and how much for rates. This would not bring home the amount of the rate quite so vividly as the actual visits of the rate-collector, but it would at least help the tenant to realise that one part of the sum he has to find every week is settled, not by the landlord, but by the whole body of tenants like himself. In spite of Lord Carrington, we suspect that to poor men even a small saving may be of moment, and the knowledge that this saving may be made in the rate will often have a real influence on the part played by the small ratepayers in municipal contests.
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